Any veteran reader of Etheridge Knight's poetry or anyone who has heard him
read will have his or her favorite poems such as those that he read most
frequently, which include "Hard Rock Returns to Prison from the Hospital
for the Criminal Insane," "The Violent Space," "It Was a
Funky Deal," and "Dark Prophecy: I Sing of Shine" as we as some
of the poems I discussed above. His skilled use of the Black vernacular also
manifests itself in the many haiku poems of which he was quite fond. Using this
brief form that demanded precision to hone his skill, Knight produced poetry
that was humorous, urbane or sophisticated, colloquial, historical, political,
musical, rhythmical, and spiritual.

A final characteristic of Knight's poetry that is reflective of an African
philosophical tradition rather than a Euro-American worldview is the spiritual
tradition of paying homage to the ancestors. This method of writing poems with
famous cultural or influential Black political and literary leaders as subject
or as poetic references gained popularity in the late 1960s and continues to
dominate African-American poetry. In "The Bones of My Father," the
style of Knight's poem technically echoes Henry Dumas' short story "Ark of
Bones," Richard Wright's poem "Between the World and Men as well as
Langston Hughes' "The Negro Speaks of Rivers." "On Watching
Politicians Perform at Martin Luther King's Funeral," "For Malcolm, a
Year Later" and "It Was a Funky Deal" pay tribute to Martin
Luther King and Malcolm X respectively while "For Langston Hughes"
obviously pays homage to the bard of the Harlem Renaissance.

Knight's tribute to the ancestors emerges as a ritualistic drama in which the
values of the poet's ancestors are reborn, "redefined, reaffirmed and
reinterpreted, at once giving them added viability and sacralizing their new
form" (Ani 9).This African philosophical perspective differs significantly
from the Eurocentric concept of intertextuality that confines itself to reading
texts only within the context of other texts. Clearly, the African-American
poetic tradition, particularly since the 1960s, challenges a Eurocentric
definition of poetry and simultaneously demands that our critical exegesis
begins with an emic critical perspective before moving to an etic critical
investigation that runs the risk of estranging the poets from their tradition
and the community about which they write. A truly African oral performer,
Etheridge Knight's subjects grew out of his and his people's lives. And viewed
in the context of an African philosophical/aesthetic tradition, his poetry
places him among those at the vanguard of any discussion of the history of
African-American poetic letters.

from "The Poetry of Etheridge Knight: A Reflection of an African
Philosophical/Aesthetic Worldview." The Worchester Review. 19.1-2,
1998.